


It Won't Go Away

by deerna



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Breathplay, Canon-Typical Violence, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 11:16:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8842591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deerna/pseuds/deerna
Summary: Will had moved through life like a shard of glass in a jar of sand, cutting the hands of those who poured it out, trying to get a closer look. People never got through to him, and the ghosts in his head screeched, leaving colors against his eyelids like stained glass. Echoes of lives that didn’t exist anymore or never existed, consumed by a kind of hunger that could never be satisfied. Killers and victims, hunters and prey. He was both and neither, but he’d never known that he was thirsty. ---Will is haunted by guilt and doubt. Hannibal helps through him introducing him to a different coping method.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mikaeru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikaeru/gifts).



> I started writing this fic right after the end of season 3 but then life happened and writer's block happened and _procrastination happened_ and- excuses, excuses. Writing this year just didn't agree with me.
> 
> A few months ago I promised myself that I could move on to other fandoms only if I could finish at least three old WIPs- and this is one of them. I admit I wasn't too sure about this story. _Hannibal_ as a show has such a unique atmosphere and style of storytelling that I was really afraid I wasn't going to do it justice... but at some point while I was writing I started have a lot of fun with the imagery and the weird metaphors. Hope it doesn't sound too ridiculous haha. 
> 
> A huge thank you to [Mikaeru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikaeru), who read the first snippet and waited for the rest of the story 14 months, [Kaesaria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaesaria), who is basically this story's saviour, and to all the other amazing people who patiently listened to my whining and whom I forced to read the thing because I was anxious as hell.

“What are you looking at?”

Will winced at his cracking voice, licked his cracked lips. A cracked soul. The afterglow always felt painful these days. He knew that it was because of their wounds, almost healed but still tender, but sometimes he wondered if the ache came from somewhere deeper, somewhere where Hannibal's capable hands couldn't cut and sew back up.

Hannibal looked peaceful laying on his back against the pillows, just a hint of ambient light shining in his eyes, dark and liquid in the velvety blackness of the room, a small smile on his lips.

“You,” Hannibal replied, his soft smile growing larger, showing a hint of teeth. “I'm looking at you.”

“There's nothing to see, it's too dark,” Will muttered, suddenly self-conscious. He traced the soft lines of muscles and scars on Hannibal's stomach before getting up, grimacing at the wetness sliding down his thigh. He wondered if Hannibal could see that too, glistening obscenely in the soft light that came from the open window. He refused to think about it as he fetched a towel from the bathroom, as he quickly cleaned the both of them up.

He climbed back on the bed, laying down next to Hannibal, his head on his chest. A hand came up to play with his hair and Will sighed, closing his eyes.

“I don't need my eyes to see what you're turning into, my dear Will,” Hannibal murmured, drowsily.

Will stiffened. “Don't, please.”

Hannibal made a displeased noise. “It's a shame that after all we’ve been through together, you still don't accept yourself, Will. Are you holding yourself back still?”

Will rolled  on his other side, away from Hannibal so he wouldn't have to face his disappointment. He curled up around his pillow, fear and old tendrils of guilt swirling around in his gut. “I'm not holding anything back,” he whispered, his throat tight. "I'm here, we're both happy, aren't we? Can't we just sleep, please?"

Hannibal scooted closer, a familiar warmth against Will's back. His nose bumped against the soft flesh under Will’s jaw, pressing wet kisses on the side of his neck with a gentle mouth. He was being courteous; Hannibal liked to bite, and wasn't shy about it either. Will still had teeth marks on his thighs from the previous nights.

“Happiness is such a volatile concept,” Hannibal said, murmuring his words behind Will's ear, so that he felt more their vibration than heard the sound. “For the longest time I thought that it wasn't possible to experience it, outside some degree of delusion.”

Will closed his eyes. Glimpses of happiness, when sleep eluded him, when his mind went unfocused, when instincts took over.

Cold nights spent with Molly, burrowed in their stilted domestic life. The smell of her hair, the feel of it against his face; the small huffing sounds from the dogs sleeping around their bed; the quiet creak of the floorboards in the hallway that acted up whenever Walter stepped on them while going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Warmth.

Sitting on a padded bench in the middle of an art exhibit, the soft scratching of graphite against rough paper, clear and crisp. Hannibal's slight smile; the easy connection they shared whenever they were in the same room. The strange, cotton-like feeling that he always got from ancient paintings, like clouds and fog and smoke; hushed, distant, foreign chattering, and the clarity of Hannibal's voice. Warmth.

Adrenaline flooding his veins, the pulse of his heart beating in his ears. Glass shattering in the night, the urge to stay alive, through the urgency of danger and then- the rush of the fight, the triumph of a successful hunt. Drowning in blood, flesh giving under his knife, under his hand. Warmth.

Will's breath itched. A shiver rolled down his spine, cold and sharp, unyielding like a blade.

“I can't help but noticing that you're speaking in the past tense,” he croaked, trying to shake it off. “Does that mean that you don't think that anymore?”

Hannibal huffed an amused sound right against the nape of his neck. “Well, of course. Since you've joined me, Will, I've felt something I believe akin to happiness.” A hand closed around Will’s hip, strong and soft, pulling him closer. Warmth.

“Maybe it is a delusion,” Will countered. He felt a little breathless, hot and cold at the same time, something freezing deep inside his gut and his skin burning under Hannibal’s touch. He closed his eyes, trying to keep the darkness out, but it was inside him too.

“In the beginning I was your plaything. You found me interesting, and you had your fun, observing me, manipulating me, pushing me. Then your fascination grew, and transformed, and the game wasn’t fun anymore. You pushed, and then you held back, because you were afraid your new toy was going to break. You’ve become obsessed with the idea of me, you’ve convinced yourself that you need me around to feel happiness. That sounds like delusion to me.”

The harshness of the words sounded good in Will’s dry throat. He was playing  _ j'accuse _ with a man who had the power to snap his neck with his bare hands, having pillow talk with a cannibalistic serial killer, a man that was human only in the sense that he looked like one.

He listened to Hannibal’s quiet breath in the dark, and waited.

“Our ideas are not set in stone. When exposed to new thoughts, they congeal into their most potent form,” Hannibal finally said. “It may be a delusion. It may be that my ideas just adapted.” His hand came up to stroke Will’s cheek and gently forced him to roll on his other side, so that now they were laying on the bed facing each other. “But I won’t ever forget that you saw me, Will, and that I saw you in turn.”

Will tried to pull away, but Hannibal wouldn’t let him. He cradled Will’s face in both hands and pulled him closer, until he could whisper right against Will’s mouth. “I see you, Will.”

He kissed him, aggressively licking his way in, until Will could only give in and shake apart. His body burned when Hannibal kissed him, and his mind went quiet, full of mist.

Will had moved through life like a shard of glass in a jar of sand, cutting the hands of those who poured it out, trying to get a closer look. People never got through to him, and the ghosts in his head screeched, leaving colors against his eyelids like stained glass. Echoes of lives that didn’t exist anymore or never existed, consumed by a kind of hunger that could never be satisfied. Killers and victims, hunters and prey. He was both and neither, but he’d never known that he was thirsty.

Will’s body was still loose from their previous intercourse. Hannibal sighed, as he sank into him like he belonged there, pressing him into the mattress. The rhythm they fell into was like waves against a cliff, it took Will’s breath away with every thrust, until--

A bite on the neck cleared the mist away. The soft bloom of ache reminded him of all the other times that Hannibal had printed his teeth in his flesh in the throes of passion. It reminded him of all the times Will had turned a blind eye to the rational part of his brain, all the times he had given into his instincts and let Hannibal have him.

(Warmth.)

Hannibal’s bites felt as good as his kisses, but while pleasure made Will feverish, pain made him lucid. Being lucid felt good, like taking a breath after drowning, but it also was bad, because it made him aware.

It made him aware that he was fucking the serial killer whom he was supposed to lock up, who was supposed to rot in prison until the end of his days and in hell after that, whom he had sworn to hate and despise. It made him aware that nothing had felt as good as Hannibal’s hands on his body. It made him aware, and it made him angry and ashamed, because he knew that even though he acted like he hadn’t had a choice, Will  _ had chosen this _ .

Shame burned cold, and Hannibal’s body was hot.  _ Fuck. _

“Get off me, Hannibal.” Will knew that he wouldn’t be able to push him off if Hannibal refused to go. He knew that he was supposed to feel fear about something like that. He didn’t. Shame boiled in his guts, low and angry.

Hannibal stopped, pulled out without a sound of protest, giving him space but keeping close, staring at him in the dark. Will couldn’t see his face clearly, but he knew that there wouldn’t be confusion or doubt there. Curiosity, maybe. Interest. Hannibal’s head moved, blocking the faint light.

Before Hannibal could speak, Will interrupted him. “I’m not scared of you.”

Hannibal chuckled. “I never thought you were. But I think you’re afraid of yourself.”

“I’m not,” he snapped.

“Now, that is a lie. You’ve always been taught that there’s something frightening about what you are, haven’t you? And now that it’s been left free to thrive for the first time, now that it’s growing and becoming something beautiful, you’re trying to smother it.”

He gently caressed Will’s cheek before offering him his hand and pulling him up. They sat side by side for a long moment in the silence, watching the moonlight move across the floor as time went by, as the wind cleared the clouds away, making the room brighter. 

The moon had been fuller that night. The blacks had been deep and the whites had been sharp. Black blood and white teeth. Jagged glass and warmth, hands on his back. Clarity, clean cut and--

“There’s nothing beautiful about what we did,” Will finally said, miserable. The anger had trickled out of him like sand in a hourglass. He was calmer, but he still felt shame-cold.

“Those were your words.” Hannibal’s voice didn’t sound like an accusation, more like a reminder.

Will flinched.  _ No shit _ . 

“It’s okay,” Hannibal reassured him. “You were talking about us, weren’t you?”

Will opened his mouth to answer, but he found that he couldn’t. He licked his lips instead, and watched the moonlight creep on the marble floor.

He knew that Hannibal knew that he was still feeling conflicted about their relationship. They had never talked about it in so many words, but it was as if they had. Will felt torn between his duty towards the people, and his selfish, personal needs. It made everything so much more complicated than it needed to be. 

He found himself missing that night. It was stupid, because that night was the very reason he was feeling like crap right now, but it had felt so good while it was happening. It had been uncomplicated;, easy like breathing. No time to think about good and bad, right and wrong, sane and insane, love and hate. Just muscles, bone, blood, sweat. Like fucking. He regretted telling Hannibal to stop.

“Will,” came Hannibal’s voice, warm and soft. “Let me help. What’s troubling you?”

“I’m not entirely sure I know myself,” he muttered, taking his head into his hands. He pulled at the strands of matted hair, pushed his palms against his healing cheek, hoping that the ache would chase away the fog and the fear. “I feel like I’m losing myself, again and again.”

“What does it feel like?”

“Like I’m falling,” Will rasped, gritting his teeth against the pain. “I’m falling, and I can see the sky above me, and I don’t know how the impact against the ground is going to feel.”

“Because you know that it’s not the ground you’re going to hit,” Hannibal continued for him, quietly, “but water. And you already know that you’re going to swim, because that’s what you  _ do _ , but you’ve lived on the ground all your life.”

_ That sounds about right _ . Will huffed in frustration, letting his hands fall into his lap. “I regret that metaphor, this isn’t getting us anywhere.”

Hannibal smiled, a twitch at the corner of his vision. “Would you like me to translate what you meant?”

Instead of answering, Will pushed him down on the bed and straddled him. “Wouldn’t you prefer to reschedule this conversation to another time, and go back to what we were doing?” He was probably going to chew himself out with guilt and self-loathing over this later, but right now he just wanted to get out of his head. Make things simple again.

A sparkle of disappointment glinted in Hannibal’s darkened eyes, but his smile didn’t waver, and he didn’t stop Will’s hands from wandering across his body. “If you think it can be of use for your peace of mind,” Hannibal started, and Will recognised it for the scolding it was, “do keep going. I’m not going to take your coping methods from you.” 

Will couldn’t even find it in himself to feel resentful towards Hannibal, his ability to read through Will so easily. It was one of the things that kept him from hating Hannibal like he was supposed to; there was simply  _ no one else _ who could do it just like that, and Will  _ craved it _ . 

Still, a wave of fresh guilt washed over him. He would’ve preferred leaving the chewing out for later.

_ It’s not like he doesn’t have a point _ . 

“Then let’s keep going,” he snapped, instead. “I didn’t make you for the type who doesn’t like to mix the useful with the pleasurable.”

“I don’t mind,” Hannibal said, punctuating his words by bringing his own hands to Will’s ass and squeezing. “Still, I don’t think you’re following the right technique.”

“Really?” Will smirked, stroking him to full hardness, enjoying Hannibal’s surprised gasp. “I thought I was doing pretty well, but what do I know, you’re the doctor after all.”

Hannibal’s grabbed his wrist before Will could continue in his ministrations. “Have you ever heard of erotic asphyxiation?”

Will frowned. “I have.” He had seen it, too. Way too many kids ending up choking themselves to death with ties in their closets, just to get off more quickly, chasing the high, the ecstasy of it. “What of it?”

“Strangling or suffocating oneself to heighten sexual arousal and orgasm. ” Hannibal’s voice was low and measured. “Done with a partner, it can have interesting dynamics.”

Will swallowed. “I thought you didn’t feel any more murderous impulses towards me.”

“I don’t,” Hannibal confirmed, pulling slowly on Will’s wrist so that his hand touched Hannibal’s  neck, smooth and warm. “But you still do. Don’t you?”

Straddling his thighs, Will was just momentarily distracted by the feeling of  Hannibal’s erection, hot and hard against his own stirring dick, before his eyes went back to the pale column of his neck. He pulled out of Hannibal’s grasp, and touched along his chest before loosely wrapping his hand around Hannibal’s throat. He could feel the pulse jumping against the pads of his fingers. 

“I don’t want to kill you,” Will whispered, dragging a thumb over his pulse point. The skin there felt so delicate, even where Hannibal’s jaw was slightly rough with stubble.

“Tell me what you want.” 

“I want… warmth,” Will closed his eyes, breathing deeply, gritting his teeth. “I want to stop feeling guilty about this,” he rasped out, feeling like the flickering light bulb in their tiny shared bathroom, exposed and unstable. 

“You feel guilty because you’re going against what you’ve always thought was right,” Hannibal said, low and quiet. His hands were pressing calming circles into Will’s flesh. “That’s commendable, Will. There’s no shame in that.” 

“Doing bad things makes me feel good,” Will pressed on. “You made me aware of this truth about myself. I’ve always told myself that the pleasure I felt while I was working was something… healthy. Like pride, like--it doesn’t matter now. It wasn’t, and I always knew that. I wish--” Will’s voice stuck in his throat. “I wish I could live with this knowledge. I can’t. I can’t control it. I want it gone.”

Hannibal’s hands felt like a brand on his cooling skin. “Being aware of something is the first step to accepting it, Will,” he purred. “The matter now is how you choose to cope with it. You used to ignore it. You threw yourself in your work, ignoring a part of yourself--you had no choice. There’s no shame into adapting to survive. But now you are free. What are you going to do now?”

The sky was clear, and the moon low enough that the whole room was filled with moonlight. Hannibal’s eyes looked colorless, almost pinkish in the cold light. They were fixated on Will, waiting for an answer, but the words didn’t came. 

Will’s hand tightened, and Hannibal gasped for breath . 

It was play. A risky, reckless, dangerous game, but play nonetheless. The force he was applying wasn’t enough to completely cut off his air supply; he wasn’t seeking Hannibal’s death, not for real, not now that Hannibal had become so interesting, so  _ precious _ to him. But he could see himself  _ keep going _ , watching Hannibal’s face until he turned cyanotic, watching his eyes go wide and panicked, the grasp of his hands on Will’s back getting weaker and weaker, while a strange warmth pooled in Will’s body. The thrill of the kill. 

He fisted his own erection, working himself quickly. “Touch yourself,” he ordered in the same breath to Hannibal, who didn’t hesitate to obey. 

The moments before his orgasm were so frantic it felt like he was the one being choked. Will didn’t even feel Hannibal’s spurt of come against his body, and didn’t remember letting go of his neck. It had been all so intense, that it was hard to believe that he had come again earlier that night. 

It was Hannibal’s turn this time to clean them up. After all that tension, the release had left Will feeling like a wet noodle, and he didn’t even protest when Hannibal started cleaning him up in sensitive places.

“I probably should’ve given a warning before choking you,” Will slurred as Hannibal wiped him down. “How the hell are you still moving?”

“You didn’t actually kill me, you know,” Hannibal chuckled, dodging when Will tried to swat at him. “I really enjoyed it, actually. You were very beautiful in that moment.”

Will snorted. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you calling me beautiful.” 

_ Especially not while I’m picturing you dying.  _

“I realize that my honesty on this matter makes you very uncomfortable. I really can’t help it.” 

Will remained silent for a long moment. “No, it’s fine. I’ll… cope, I guess.” 

Will could almost hear Hannibal’s smile as he lied down and made himself comfortable against him, but then his voice sounded somber and serious again. 

“Acceptance, like healing, is a process. If you try to rush it you’ll get hurt. I really don’t want that for you.” 

“No, I mean it, it’s fine. I--I really want this, Hannibal. Us.”  _ As much as it pains me to admit it _ . “I’m probably going to never have another chance to have something like this. I don’t want to lose it.”

“Hearing you say it makes me believe even more that happiness isn’t just a delusion of mine.” 

“You’re such a fucking sap.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Read inedit snippets on [my writing tumblr](http://somewhatclear.tumblr.com) or say hi on [my main](http://deerna.tumblr.com)!


End file.
